Day 28: Airlie Beach

A long day today with a long drive as we are relocating up the coast to get to the Whitsundays. This entails driving over 1000Km in a day. We are using the main highway, but it really isn't that great a road - lots of it is single lane, goes through towns etc.

Dan takes the first shift and is clocking off the clicks admirably and we are enjoying a strenuous sing-a-long to Rocky Horror (Sweet Transvestite to be exact)when we get pulled over by the police. The police car pulls a u-turn on the road and comes along side, then the officer asks us to follow him off the road. He turns off and seems to drive for ages down this dusty dirt track before turning off into a small gravel siding. This seems to be the start of every "hicks kill the tourists" movie I've ever seen.

The guy comes over and Dan does his best "How can we help, Chief Constable" routine. Turns out he was radar-ing passing cars and clocked us doing 121Km in a 100Km zone.

Dan gets his international driving permit and UK licence from the back; when the officer clocks these, he decides to let us off with a warning, which it turns out later is an extremely rare event.

We continue the rest of the journey with the cruise control on, set religiously to 99KPH and are then over-taken by every other vehicle on the road, including a house on the back of a trailer and practically every car, van and truck that we'd passed in the morning.

Still, we've sorted out accommodation and what we're going to do in the Whitsundays over the next few days so that's good.

We get into Airlie Beach and find the apartment - 70s tackarama throughout, then head out to check out the town. This is certainly the liveliest place we have been so far (outside of the cities) and Dan has sniffed out the karoake place in about 3 minutes - surely something of a record even for him.

After a nice dinner we set off for the bar, Dan a bit anxious that the karaoke session has been running for 20 minutes without us there. We get in sight of the bar, thinking all is well, only to be asked for ID! First time in 16 years. Not terribly amused, but we head back up the big hill to the apartment then present the doorman with our driving licences - resisting the urge to hold them close to his face and twat him on the nose.

Dan, of course, is excellent in his rendition of "Love is in the air".

Tomorrow: Cruise number one.